Recovering stolen gun was one of fallen Grand Rapids Police Officer Robert Kozminski's last arrests

Mark Copier | The Grand Rapids PressBack in his hands: John Sobotta holds a Luger that was stolen from his collection and later recovered.

GRAND RAPIDS — John Sobotta always wondered — and worried — about the guns stolen a decade ago while he stayed at a friend’s house on Knapp Street NE in Grand Rapids

His German Luger turned up a year later, after a parolee shot himself in the leg.

The other, a .38 special Cobra Colt, was found by Grand Rapids Police Officer Robert Kozminski, who heard shots and arrested a suspect running with a gun in his coat.

That was Dec. 14, 2006. It was one of Kozminski’s last felony arrests.

Seven months later he was killed while responding to a domestic-violence call on July 8, 2007.

Six years is not a long time for a gun to disappear on the streets. The average is twice that in Michigan, federal records show.

It is not known where John Sobotta’s .38 special spent those six years. Internal police reports and federal records show where it ended up.

It was near freezing and overcast, just before 10:30 p.m., the night Kozminski recovered the stolen six shooter.

Anthony McKnight

He saw Anthony Q. McKnight, then 23, fleeing the area near Bradford Street NE and Clancy Avenue, where shots had been fired at a house. McKnight was holding the right side of his chest, the tell-tale sign of a concealed a weapon.

Kozminski chased McKnight, also known as T-Dog, Joe West and Money Green, among his half dozen aliases. He lost track when McKnight hid between cars in a parking lot, spotting him when he ran again. McKnight no longer held his hands on his chest.

Kozminski ordered him to stop. The gun was found under a car.

McKnight told Kozminski he only clutched his chest to hold his cigarettes and cell phone, not to hide a weapon. McKnight claimed someone else actually shot at him.

TIME TO CRIME

Time to crime: The police term refers to how long a weapon disappears before resurfacing in the wrong hands. For each day of this series, gun traces and Press research detail the firearms’ stories.

Gun: .38 special Colt Cobra, six-shot revolver

Disappeared: Stolen on or about Jan. 1, 2000, from a home on Knapp Street NE in Grand Rapids.

“While on the way to jail, McKnight continuously swore at me and advised he was going to sue me,” Kozminski reported.

McKnight was sent to prison for 57 months, where he remains today in the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution in Greenville, Ill.

Like many in Grand Rapids hit with gun charges, he was prosecuted in federal court, where sentencing guidelines typically far exceed what would be expected in state court.

McKnight grew up in poverty. His mother worked low-paying jobs to support the family.

Sobotta, who inherited the .38 revolver from his father, didn’t report the guns stolen until contacted by a federal agent after a felon accidentally shot himself in the leg.
“He wanted to know how it got out,” Sobotta recalled.

He’d kept the guns in a safe, but when he moved briefly out of his home, he hid them in a friend’s house. There were no signs of forced entry, and he believes someone there knew he had the guns.

His father, Anselm Sobotta, owned Unique Cleaners & Dryers and armed himself to protect his business. He sat up at night inside his store on Grandville Avenue SW near Franklin Street during the 1967 riots. A business across the street was firebombed.

The son, a Vietnam War veteran and a hunter and target shooter, always feared the lost guns would wind up in the wrong hands.

“I sure did, all the time,” he said. “It just was horrible, really, because of my stupidity. That would weigh heavily on my mind.”